A system to control a distributed, mesh lighting network is disclosed in the co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/709,935, filed Sep. 20, 2017, entitled “System and Method for Bottom-Up Invocation of Control Signal Repeaters in a Mesh Lighting Network”, incorporated herein by reference.
During build-out of the mesh lighting network, when a new lighting device is installed, it is in a discovery mode in which it will periodically transmit a discovery message. When a commissioned node, a repeater node, or a gateway to the central management system receives the discovery message with an acceptable node identity and a sufficient link quality indication (LQI), the new lighting device may join the network and is commissioned. After the lighting device has become commissioned in the lighting network, if the network connection degrades too much or the device loses its connection to the network, it reverts to the discovery mode and, once again, will periodically transmit a discovery message.
The mesh lighting network is self-organized via repeaters into a network of lighting nodes with repeaters fanning out control signals from a central management system to each lighting node. Lighting nodes with connectivity through one or more specific repeaters may be set up or dynamically combined to be managed as a group from a CMS or gateway. Each lighting node, in repeater mode, is capable of forwarding control signals to additional lighting nodes. During build-out of the mesh network, as new lighting nodes are installed, the control network automatically selects a node whose repeater function will provide the most efficient or reliable distribution of control signals to the new node or new group of nodes being installed.
Occasionally, network, environmental or other factors, such as gateway or repeater hardware failures, interference due to weather conditions, noisy electronic devices and/or multipath radio propagation impacts or cable cuts, may cause signal degradation or loss in the aggregated links between a lighting node in the network and the central management system.
What is needed is a way to monitor the quality of the aggregated links between a lighting node in mesh lighting network and the central management system, and to automatically command or allow a lighting node experiencing poor link quality, to enter a discovery mode to find a better quality link and rejoin the network.
What is needed is a way to combine link quality monitoring with operational monitoring of a lighting node to determine whether the illumination by a node is failing.
What is needed is a way to combine link quality monitoring with operational monitoring of a lighting node to detect a failing node and to compensate for illumination deficiencies of the failing node.